Bickering Continues About NVIDIA Using DMA-BUF

[D0pamine]

this is a legal issue - its most definitely good troll bait though :P

[efikkan]

This is actually a situation where GPL is indirectly restricting freedom, and the end result might be Nvidia ending up creating another non-free module.

[yogi_berra]

I hope the kernel developers will come up with a solution that proprietary and open-source drivers can use to cooperate for the mixed architectures, instead of just denying any efforts by the nVidia team to make a better consumer experience on Linux happen.

Do you expect a neckbeard like Alan to work with anyone?



If so, I've got a bridge to sell you.

[D0pamine]

This is actually a situation where GPL is indirectly restricting freedom, and the end result might be Nvidia ending up creating another non-free module.

it might restrict nvidias freedom to pervert the opengl specifications and dominate the gpu market but it in no way restricts my freedom

[efikkan]

it might restrict nvidias freedom to pervert the opengl specifications and dominate the gpu market but it in no way restricts my freedom

Get your facts straight, Nvidia has the best OpenGL implementation and is in no way perverting the specifications.

[jrch2k8]

NVidia is the only graphics vendor who puts so much effort in bringing proper drivers to the platform. I don't know their reasons, though - perhaps Linux is still being used for content creation somewhere in CAD industry which had relied on Unix since SGI times, and they have to support that. Either way, without NVidia, Linux gaming is stillborn. Linux as a desktop OS will be dead for me as well. Probably I'm a minority though... Maybe I need to create an online petition asking Alan Cox to stop blocking proper NVidia Linux drivers (binary or not) to gather more support...

Linux kernel devs need to get pragmatic - the IT industry is no more Wild West it used to be. CPUs with open documentation are becoming thing of the past and soon you'll need to sign an NDA to get CPU docs, because CPU will be integrated with GPUs. R&D is more and more expensive and technology needs to be guarded from competition by all means necessary (lawsuits being the most reliable), opensourcing it just because a bunch of hobbyists wants to be able to tinker with that is not a smart move as competition will get your costly research for free...

And as much as I hate that situation (being hobbyist myself), I kind of agree with that... This is the natural path followed by established industries (ever tried to get Coca-Cola open-source its recipe? And are you taking only "open-source" medicines?) so I predict IT to become the same as it matures. GPL hinders progress by effectively eliminating competition between "licensees" who are forced to act as if they had a single goal, and thus it is counter-innovative. Either you need exceptions from it or you are following the HURD path to obscurity.

wrong wrong wrong another lazy to read post

1.) PLZ READ THE MAILING LIST, alan cox is not stopping anything he is pointing out a legal conflict that need to be legally solved by lawyers
2.) Linux kernel devs need to get pragmatic part : NO what the hell ?? since you ovbiously don't know anything about hardware ill explain open documentation means document hardware entry points to be used by any software not the frigging electronic schematics and there is no way in hell to reverse engeneer the hardware schematics from a set of registers.
3.) R&D again NO intel/AMD/NVIDIA secret sauce is inside the silicon not the registers and GPU technologies are INDUSTRY STANDARDS open to anyone, there is no such thing as intel only secret sauce OpenGL that same applies to CPU X86 ASM is an STANDARD. all that means intel/AMD dont need to give me their CPU schematics to support X86/SIMD they just tell me XMM registers are x,y,z and take A,B as parameter so my compiler will know that when you ask to put data in XMM he will send A,B values to the register x,y,z instead of d,f,g which is for an AMD cpus, in the case of GPU is the same the docs provide an huge amount of registers that do certain things[inside the blackbox silicon] next i download the OpenGL standard and try to do what the standard asks getting creative in combine those registers in a way that do the asked by the standard fast enough
4.) nvidia cant open their current code not because of the blatanly wrong things you mentioned since their driver don't do anything magical or mythical but they have loads of external to nvidia code and probably unresolved patent issues that will be exposed for lawyers sue them for the next 20 years and many other legally complicated things.

so no open documentation won't damage them in any way at all in 90% of the gpu functions[UVD/VDPAU gpu parts require MPAA combo autorization or they loose the license but no because loss of R&D or internal secrets]

[D0pamine]

Get your facts straight, Nvidia has the best OpenGL implementation and is in no way perverting the specifications.

who said nvidia has the best opengl implementation? on what are you basing this 'fact'?
oi michael ( is that his name? ) piglit comparisons! lets put this 'who's got the best opengl' question to bed plz

[D0pamine]

I wonder what mr stallman thinks about this... after all if anyone should be deciding on bending the GPL it should be the original author

then again does he really need to be asked? i'm pretty sure he'll say 'fuck you nvidia' but in a nicer way ofcourse.... maybe he'll offer nvidia some of his toe jam

[RCL_]

My reply to "OSS is on the rise" guys:

I'm not seeing industry like that. Soon, we will need to jailbreak our PCs just to have a non-signed OS installed. Thanks God Microsoft was pressed hard enough to allow exception for x86 arch, but if x86 dies (and it is not certain that it will remain dominant by 2020), we will wake up in a world where EVERY device is locked by design. Oh, and ARM 64-bit processors feature "TrustZone" privilege level for those thinking that this is just a matter of getting BIOS reflashed.

As for GPL exceptions:

During its 20+ year history, GPL (v2+) proved to be very shaky ground to build upon. Unless you guys are posting using gNewSense you ARE relying on GPL exceptions in your day-to-day activities. There are valid reasons (be it patents, lawsuits or R&D costs) to keep the code hidden sometimes and rejecting them gets you nowhere.

[artivision]

NVidia is the only graphics vendor who puts so much effort in bringing proper drivers to the platform. I don't know their reasons, though - perhaps Linux is still being used for content creation somewhere in CAD industry which had relied on Unix since SGI times, and they have to support that. Either way, without NVidia, Linux gaming is stillborn. Linux as a desktop OS will be dead for me as well. Probably I'm a minority though... Maybe I need to create an online petition asking Alan Cox to stop blocking proper NVidia Linux drivers (binary or not) to gather more support...

Linux kernel devs need to get pragmatic - the IT industry is no more Wild West it used to be. CPUs with open documentation are becoming thing of the past and soon you'll need to sign an NDA to get CPU docs, because CPU will be integrated with GPUs. R&D is more and more expensive and technology needs to be guarded from competition by all means necessary (lawsuits being the most reliable), opensourcing it just because a bunch of hobbyists wants to be able to tinker with that is not a smart move as competition will get your costly research for free...

And as much as I hate that situation (being hobbyist myself), I kind of agree with that... This is the natural path followed by established industries (ever tried to get Coca-Cola open-source its recipe? And are you taking only "open-source" medicines?) so I predict IT to become the same as it matures. GPL hinders progress by effectively eliminating competition between "licensees" who are forced to act as if they had a single goal, and thus it is counter-innovative. Either you need exceptions from it or you are following the HURD path to obscurity.

Well, that is one sided. "Wine" made windows games possible, we our self did it. Linux success doesn't have to do with Nvidia, and not even with closed games compatibility, but with more people waking up. Nobody makes the transition without sacrifice in mind. Microsoft, Ati, and Nvidia, made a cartel and both assisted Microsoft to create D3D and close all the games inside windows. Both companies are privileged. That is among others illegal to almost all countries. Its also illegal to pay someone to release games only for your platform (Microsoft, Sony). Anyway Nvidia's drivers are the best for compatibility and speed, but Intel's open source are better than AMD's closed ones, and soon will beat Nvidia's to, because that's the road of open source. Some times something starts with r600 driver and doesn't start with Catalyst. The only reason that Open Drivers (except Intel's) are slow, its because we can't target efficiently the hardware. That's AMD's and Nvidia's fault, not providing good a optimizer, or at least good LLVM back-ends. But its matter of time. In the mid time i decided not to use or sell another AMD or Nvidia hardware. I have drop Microsoft many years ago, AMD before two years, and now i drop Nvidia. Only Intel is acceptable for me now (or in the future with 40 cores cards), and maybe someone else if i see an alternative, like a commercial Loongson.